Artist Provocateur Genesis Breyer P-Orridge Lives By the Last Exit To Brooklyn

How far the mighty have (not) fallen

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, sitting in the "love chair" her late wife owned when they first met, "where we'd sit and cuddle for hours."

Shelter, a column about New Yorkers and the places they call home, ran in this paper from 1997 to 2006. To relaunch the feature, which will run here online weekly, weve assembledfiveportraits of New Yorkers at home.

"P Orridge" appears on the lobby buzzer, as if it's just any other name. An elevator ride away, there is artist and provocateur Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, all charcoal eyes and leather motorcycle vest. Opening the door with a silver-knuckled hand, she presents her Manhattan one-bedroom apartment with a game-show-prize-unveiling swoop. "Look how far the mighty have fallen," she projects in an all-knowing British lilt.

Paul Quitoriano

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, at home in h/er Manhattan living room/office

Paul Quitoriano

A wolf-fur bedspread, inspired by Kirk Douglas in The Vikings S/he says, "Doesn't it make you want to get naked and roll on it?"

"Mighty," absolutely. "Fallen" is inaccurate. "Evolved" seems more like it.

Purchased a year ago for $325,000 and requiring $60,000 in renovations, this has been Genesis's nest since June 2010, when she (or s/he, as Gen specifies) sold the Ridgewood, Queens, brownstone that she and her late wife, Lady Jaye, had shared for more than a decade. In preparation for the move, she held a two-day tag sale in a Queens-basement art gallery. Splayed out for prospective buyers were punk-rock dresses with safety-pinned seams, a volcanic-rock-shaped mirror-ball blob, and a pink glass perfume bottle marked $65. Oh, and a table full of dildos. The latter wasn't Gen's idea, she clarifies. Friends helping her dig through drawers and boxes discovered a cache of sex toys, and someone suggested putting them out for $100 a piece. "I'm like, 'No, that's going a bit far,' " she says, presiding over her kitchen floor. But they sold immediately—people wanted to know if they'd been used by Genesis and Jaye. (Read: hoped.) Genesis, who now has gold teeth, C-cup breasts, and male plumbing, was flummoxed. "OK! You can have the secondhand dildos," she conceded. "That was bizarre, even for me."

Anyone acquainted with P-Orridge's body of work might find that last bit surprising: bizarre, even for me. This is the human who once famously co-orchestrated Prostitution, a polemical 1976 exhibition that thrust porn, used Tampax sculptures, and transvestite guards into the London ICA and ultimately caused a Parliament member to condemn Genesis and cohorts as "wreckers of civilization." This is someone who has jerked off onstage, wounded himself (then) in public, and was effectively exiled from his homeland. This is an individual frequently cited as the owner of 14 dick piercings, which may or may not still be true (didn't ask). A person who met her soulmate in an s/m dungeon. A sentient being who believes so resolutely that art and life are one and the same that she and her wife had doctors carve up their bodies in a quest for pandrogeny—the process of merging their identities through surgeries, mannerisms, and dress.

So how does a living legend like Genesis live? Like everyone. White walls, wooden floors, gas stove. Toilet, sink, refrigerator, coat rack. Throw rugs, futon, laptop, phone. The Keith Richards memoir Life, Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Deception (!), Dr. Julian Whitaker's Reversing Diabetes harmoniously occupying the living-room bookshelf. (P-Orridge learned last fall, after returning home early from an aborted Throbbing Gristle tour, that she was diabetic.) Barbed novelty-shop bromides in the form of a rectangular pink pillow cautioning "WARNING: I REALLY DON'T CARE." A perfectly acerbic magnet that cracks "I WOULD RATHER BE 40 THAN PREGNANT." A pair of satiny slippers on a mat by the front door, patterned with teddy bears.

And like no one. A yonic Virgin Mary figure. A cardboard box marked "Yoko Ono–Art Piece." A closet full of Rubbermaid storage containers stuffed with fetish clothes, wigs, Tibetan cloth. An air-conditioned bedroom where the temperature is fixed at a chilly 63 degrees. (She doesn't pay for utilities.) A wolf-fur bedspread, inspired by Kirk Douglas in The Vikings ("I just blew my entire credit card on it"). A catastrophe-prone snake-shaped Shiva trumpet from Kathmandu. Genesis was warned not to blow it idly—the instrument allegedly conjures the forces of Shiva, destruction and so on—but she played it one day during a Pigface recording session in L.A., with Skinny Puppy's Ogre and bassist caricature Flea. "Well, that was the night of the earthquake," she reports impishly. The instrument hasn't been played since.

And like a widow. A carved-rabbit blood totem with a lock of Jaye's hair sits on a dresser. The first photo Jaye ever sent Gen hangs from the bedroom wall. In the living area, there's an enlargement of the last photo of Lady Jaye ever taken, rescued from her cell phone after she died, sunglasses, red lips, extended middle finger. ("It's as if she knew," Genesis says with a sigh.) Their wedding photo from Friday, June 13, 1995, is especially prescient: Jaye is the groom—blond hair greased back with skintight biker pants, a leather vest with nothing underneath, a drawn-on mustache—cradling her dreadlocked bride.

This is partly why Queens was so ideal for so long. "In January 1996, we arrived as husband and wife, me still dressing and technically behaving male, and all the local shopkeepers who knew Jaye from being a kid, all the neighbors, being like, 'Oh, you're the husband! We've heard about you.' And then over the years, we transformed more and more until we were both running around in miniskirts, dressed the same, and none of them said anything! Except in the pharmacy, where very politely, one of the Pakistani guys we knew very well there—we talked about cricket with him, because he loved to talk about cricket—and he says one day, 'Hope you don't mind me asking, but you probably want us to say "Miss P-Orridge" now, don't you?' We said, 'That would be good!' And that was the one time anyone even mentioned that anything had happened."

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Wow. I met Genesis and Paula back in the 80's and again in 1990 in New Orleans.I feel so bad for GPO. He really loved Jaye with all of his heart and now Genesis seems like a shell of a person. It is hard to watch. My heart hurts for him. Paula (Alaura is a much prettier name) dodged a bullet by splitting with GPO when she did. He was a train heading for a cliff.

f you are going to buy some novelty slippers for a friend or family member, there are a few things that you should consider. The most important thing that you should take into consideration is what that person likes. If she loves animals, you could buy her a pair of novelty slippers that has a cute animal embedded into them. It is easy to find novelty slippers in cats, tigers, dogs, rabbits, frogs, bears. Even hippos can be made into a design for a pair of comfortable slippers. For those who are into trend or just like to have fun, you could give them a pair of novelty slippers that a fruit, a heart or a cartoon character.

So strange to see stuff on Genesis and his NY existence when I know his daughters from a tiny hamlet in the woods of northern California. Both lovely young women His eldest daughter , whom I know the best, is living in Turkey, down to earth and a true gem.

Intolerant? What the hell are you talking about? I've been listening to every iteration of GPO's music since phase one of TG. Nothing GPO does shocks me, but he looks like a tattooed version of every yenta aunt, neighbor, middle-aged Jewish woman with a bleach job I have ever seen.